Sirio Canos Donnay

Historical landscapes of High Casamance: power, mobility, and
sociopolitical change in southern Senegal

The High Casamance (southern Senegal), is a region that has witnessed
dramatic sociopolitical changes in the last millennium, including its conquest
by the Mali Empire and a prominent role in the Atlantic trade, yet until now
had never been the object of an archaeological study. Two seasons of fieldwork
undertaken in 2013 revealed a landscape of shallow transient sites at odds with
the large permanent towns described by historical accounts and oral traditions.
I argue that the key to reconciling these two sets of evidence lies in a very
particular settlement pattern, by which villages and towns regularly shifted a
few hundred meters, while keeping the name, identity, and institutions of the
community. Using archaeological data derived from survey and excavation,
combined with oral traditions, both collected during fieldwork and available
from publications, as well as historical documents and ethnographic and
archaeological examples, I explore this pattern of 'shifting sedentism' and the
implications it has for our understanding of the history of the High Casamance,
as well as for the relation between statehood and mobility more widely.

Funding organisation

Arts and Humanities Research Council

Fieldwork:UCL Institute of Archaeology, UCL Graduate School, Arts and
Humanities Research Council, Tweedy Fund (University of Edinburgh) and the Company of Arts Scholars.